Deadmau5 Says DJ's Are "All Fucking Cunts"

Taken from an Irish Newspaper:

Red hot Canadian producer deadmau5 hits Irish shores this weekend but local DJ's better keep out of his way. 

the five times Beatport award winner told Clubmix in an explosive interview that he HATES DJ's and think they're all fucking cunts. 

deadmau5, pronounced 'dead mouse'. said he will only perform live shows of his own music and think DJ's should be extinct. he says, "it puts me to fucking sleep to be quite honest, i don't really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully, with all due respect to the DJ type that will fucking go the way of the dinosaur, id like them to disafuckingpear". 

Joel continued, "its so middle man, they're like fucking lawyers you need them, but they're fucking cunts. god bless them, they're my number one customer right so I'm not gonna go diss every fucking dj, but to say you've become this massive up on a podium performer by playing other peoples productions at the same speed as someone else productions and fading between the two of them, I don't get it."

Source (and more deadmau5 hate):
http://www.trancefix.nl/showthread.php?t=155475

DJ AM & Travis Barker Critically Injured In Plane Crash

WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. - Hours after performing for thousands of South Carolina college students, former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity DJ AM were critically injured in a fiery Learjet crash that killed four people, authorities said Saturday.

Officials said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. The plane hurtled off the end of a runway and crashed through antennas and a fence. It came to rest on an embankment across a five-lane highway and was engulfed in flames, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were in critical condition at a burn center in Augusta, Ga., about 75 miles southwest of Columbia, hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits said.

Two other passengers — Chris Baker, 29, of Studio City, Calif., and Charles Still, 25, of Los Angeles — died, as did pilot Sarah Lemmon, 31, of Anaheim Hills, Calif., and co-pilot James Bland, 52, of Carlsbad, according to the county coroner. Baker was an assistant to Barker and Still was a security guard for the musician.

The plane was headed for Van Nuys, Calif. It is owned by Global Exec Aviation, a California-based charter company, and was certified to operate last year, Hersman said. The company said it had no immediate comment.

At the crash site Saturday, the air was still heavy with the odor of jet fuel. A trail of black soot led off a runway. The nose of the aircraft was gone and the roof was missing from two-thirds of the charred plane.

"It's absolutely terrible and tragic," Columbia Mayor Bob Coble said.

Barker and Goldstein had performed together under the name TRVSDJ-AM at a free concert in Columbia on Friday night. Event sponsor T-Mobile said their hour-long set ended at about 7:15 p.m.

The show, which included performances by former Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell and singer Gavin DeGraw, drew 10,000 people into the streets of Five Points, the neighborhood near the University of South Carolina, Coble said.

Peter Kastis, Farrell's manager, said he and Farrell didn't find out about the crash until they arrived at the airport Saturday morning to find it closed.

"I just hugged them hello less than 24 hours ago. I wish I could hug them now," Kastis said.

One concertgoer said TRVSDJ-AM's performance was unique and different.

"It was literally one of the best shows I've ever seen," said Brett Flashnick, a freelance photographer who works for The Associated Press and attended the concert for a local newspaper.

Barker, 32, was one of the more colorful members of the multiplatinum-selling punk rock band Blink-182, whose biggest album was 1999's CD "Enema of the State," which sold more than five million copies in the United States alone.

After Blink-182 disbanded in 2005, Barker went on to form the rock band (+44) — pronounced "plus forty-four." He also starred in the MTV reality series "Meet the Barkers" with former Miss USA Shanna Moakler, to whom he was married at the time. The show documented the former couple's lavish wedding and life. Their later split, reconciliation and subsequent break up made them tabloid favorites.

Goldstein is a popular DJ for hire who at one time was engaged to Nicole Richie.

He spun a mix of hip-hop and dance beats for the hottest nightclubs and had a string of dates set up for the next few weeks. He reached the peak of his celebrity perhaps during his highly publicized romance with Richie a few years ago.

DJ AM also dated singer/actress Mandy Moore, and while he became a gossip favorite for his romances, he drew respect from music aficionados for his DJ skills.

Barker and Goldstein performed as part of the house band at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month.

There Is Hope For The Future!

Cure for deafness now within reach

Deaf people could one day have their hearing restored through a groundbreaking gene therapy technique, a new study suggests. By Roger Highfield.

Deaf people could one day have their hearing restored through a groundbreaking gene therapy technique, a new study suggests. By Roger Highfield.

The transfer of a specific gene is shown today by a milestone experiment to trigger the growth of new hair cells in the inner ear - the usually irreplaceable sensory cells that pick up sound vibrations and that are lost as a result of ageing, disease, certain drugs, and by excessive exposure to loud sound.

The approach, which one day could help millions of people worldwide with deafness and inner-ear disease, is made possible by a technique that is demonstrated in the journal Nature by an American team lead by Dr John Brigande of the Oregon Hearing Research Centre, Portland, who himself is profoundly hard of hearing.

Dr Mark Downs, Director of Science at The Royal National Institute for Deaf People, RNID says: "This is an exciting development which completes another important piece of the jig-saw in understanding how we might use gene therapy to eventually restore hearing loss."

However, he would not be drawn on when the first trials could start in patients.

"Together with the very positive early signs from other potential treatments, such as stem cell therapies, it is no longer just a pipe-dream to talk about cell and drug based solutions to restore hearing. There is a long way to go, but the journey towards new treatments is certainly under way."

Named for the hair-like projections on their surfaces, hair cells form a ribbon of vibration sensors along the length of the cochlea, the organ of the inner ear that detects sound.

Receiving vibrations through the eardrum and bones of the middle ear, hair cells convert them to electrical signals carried to the brain.

People, like all mammals, are not able to regenerate hair cells when they are damaged or lost. Dr Brigande and colleagues show in Nature that by implanting a gene that regulates hair cell growth, Atoh1, into the mouse inner ear while the mouse is still in the womb, new hair cells are made.

Dr Anthony Ricci, a collaborator at Stanford University, showed that the newly formed hair cells function as well as normal hair cells.

As for human tests, Dr Brigande says that the work is at too early a stage to say when they can start: "There is no present plan for tests in humans. The next step is to restore hearing in a deaf mouse.

"Only after this can we start experiments that will teach us if the approach might work in humans. So there is an enormous amount of work to do.

"The exciting news for those of us with hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is that we now have hope of having our hearing restored someday."

He said that some deaf people will reject the offer of gene therapy. "If a person is born without hearing, they are "Deaf" and that is a unique culture into itself. Many Deaf individuals highly value their deafness and do not wish to be hearing.

"I was born hearing, and began to lose my hearing in grade school," he adds. The cause is unknown.

"My hearing loss is progressive, so I need to think about other options in the very near future."

Would he offer himself for the first experiments on patients? "I have never considered self-experimentation to treat my hearing loss. I hope to contribute to an effort that helps define suitable therapies, which may one day be offered in the clinic. That's the right way to go about this."

Normally, humans are born with about 12,000 hair cells in each ear and the death of the cells accounts for most types of acquired hearing loss.

Overall, the steady loss that accompanies the wear and tear of ageing produces significant hearing deterioration in about a third of the population by the age of 70.

As seen on: telegraph.co.uk

Copyright 2008 - Telegraph Media Group Limited

RIP Bernie Mac

He was one funny muhfucker...

Big Brother Wants Your iPod

Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers

Vito Pilieci

Canwest News Service

OTTAWA - The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.

The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.

Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement.

The agreement is being structured much like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) except it will create rules and regulations regarding private copying and copyright laws.

Federal trade agreements do not require parliamentary approval.

The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that "infringes" on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials - even if the content was copied legally.

"If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close," said David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. "The process on ACTA so far has been cloak and dagger. This certainly raises concerns."

The leaked ACTA document states officials should be given the "authority to take action against infringers (i.e., authority to act without complaint by rights holders)."

Anyone found with infringing content in their possession would be open to a fine.

They may also have their device confiscated or destroyed, according to the four-page document.

The trade agreement includes "civil enforcement" measures which give security personnel the "authority to order ex parte searches" (without a lawyer present) "and other preliminary measures".

In Canada, border guards already perform random searches of laptops at airports to check for child pornography. ACTA would expand the role of those guards.

On top of these enforcement efforts, ACTA also proposes imposing new sanctions on Internet service providers. It would force them to hand over personal information pertaining to "claimed infringement" or "alleged infringers" - users who may be transmitting or sharing copyrighted content over the Internet.

Currently, rights holders must collect evidence to prove someone is sharing copyrighted material over the Internet. That evidence is then presented to a judge who issues a court order telling the Internet service provider to identify the customer.

The process can produce lengthy delays.

It is expected the new agreement will be tabled at July's meeting of G8 nations in Tokyo, Japan.

Fewer has been following the progress of ACTA and has exhausted every avenue at his disposal to gain insight into its details.

He said Friday's leak of a "discussion paper" which outlines the priorities of the agreement is the first glimpse anyone has into ACTA.

"We knew this existed, we filed an Access to Information request for this but all it provided us with was the title. All the rest of it was blacked out, " he said. "Those negotiations can take place behind closed doors. At the end of the day we may be provided with something that has been negotiated which is a `fait accompli' in which civil society gets no opportunity to critique it."

Fewer expressed concerns about the part of the proposal that calls for ACTA to operate outside of accepted international forums such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.

In the discussion paper, it is proposed ACTA create its own governing body and be overseen by a committee made up of representatives from member nations.

"This initiative is unprecedented," he said.

The ACTA discussion paper was leaked online by Sunshine Media, the company that runs the Wikileaks.org website - a whistleblowing website created to help circulate secret documents.

In October, International Trade Minister David Emerson announced Canada would participate in ACTA's creation. The initiative was originally aimed at stopping large-scale piracy, such as printing operations that make thousands of copies of movies that are still in theatres.

"We are seeking to counter global piracy and counterfeiting more effectively," said Emerson at the time. "This government is working both at home and internationally to protect the intellectual property rights of Canadian artists, creators, inventors and investors."

The new document is reported to be drafted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

A spokeswoman with the office refused to comment on the leaked document and directed all questions about ACTA to a short information circular about the initiative.

Michael Geist, Canada research chair of Internet and E-commerce law at the University of Ottawa and expert on Canadian copyright law, blasted the government for advancing ACTA with little public consultation. Geist said documents detailing ACTA's plans would not need to be leaked online if the process was open and transparent.

"That's what happens when you conduct all of this behind closed doors," he said. "The lack of consultation, the secrecy behind it and the speculation that this will be concluded within a matter of months without any real public input is deeply troubling."

Fewer and Geist said, once Canada signs the new trade agreement it will be next to impossible to back out of it.

In a situation similar to what happened in the Softwood Lumber trade dispute, Canadians could face hefty penalties if it does not comply with ACTA after the agreement has been completed.

The Department of International Trade did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

SOURCE: Click Here

Chicago Scene Under Attack

Like many cities, Chicago nightlife is under attack from it's own municipal government.  Just like Toronto's gov't attacked the rave scene in the early 2000's after an unfortunate incident, Chicago's gov't is doing the same... although they're taking action 5 years later.

Unlike Toronto's attack on venues, there's a law quietly being fast-tracked through Chicago's city hall that would require ALL promoters to be licensed.  This new law has been dubbed the 'Promoter Ordinance'.

Under the proposed law, independent promoters would have to acquire a promoter's license at a cost of up to $2000 every two years, obtain liability insurance for every event thrown, even if the presenting venue already has liability insurance, be fingerprinted and background checked, and maintain extensive records of each event.

As we know from our own scene, a law like this will pretty much eliminate all the smaller promoters and events for years to come and lead to a scene dominated by only large and possibly corporate events.  

Yet another city's scene set to fall due to their own council's (albeit delayed) knee-jerk reactions.

All the details for this proposed law are found HERE.